The new American musical: How the musical has changed to attract a new audience?
Essay - 6 pages - Film studies
Throughout the greater part of the twentieth century the American musical has entertained audiences of all ages and backgrounds. The musical has become a reflection of American life: sometimes tragic, somewhat unpredictable, but always persevering. The American musical has taken many shapes...
Adaptation: The perfect adaptation
Essay - 19 pages - Film studies
In 2000, The New Yorker magazine writer Susan Orlean published her book, The Orchid Thief, a history of orchids and orchid collectors. The main themes of the work include the history of the passion for plants held by cultures past and present, the perils of harsh habitats such as the Fakahatchee...
Human connection in international cinema
Essay - 7 pages - Film studies
Many of the films we have watched in Contemporary International Cinema explore the nature of love on various levels. Some focus on the platonic aspect of human connection, some look at the sociological and nationalistic bonds that hold people together, and some delve deep into the inner workings...
Musicality in movies
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
The journey to self-discovery is a highlighting period for many young adults. Many filmmakers utilize those coming-of-age experiences to express the reality and pains of growing older. One contemporary example of this genre is Garden State. Released in 2004, this film transcends beyond the...
Hitchcock, Truffaut and Godard:New wave's brothers from another motherland
Essay - 13 pages - Film studies
Alfred Hitchcock's fascination with French culture emanates in nearly all of his films. Conversely, many aspects outlining the fundamental guidelines of the 1950's French film movement adopted quintessential “Hitchcockian” devices. Hitchcock's influence on French filmmakers shaped much...
The development of the modern film industry in the Untied States and the international community
Essay - 9 pages - Film studies
Throughout the course of the twentieth century, the evolution of technology has notably changed society. While many scholars looking at the changes that technology has produced consider the improvements that have been in terms of medicine and technology, it is evident that technology has had a...
Analysis of Abbas Kiarostami's Ten
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
A car may be the most inconvenient and difficult setting for a film. I made a sixteen-minute movie which took place almost entirely in a car, and I ended up at one point crying from the frustrations. The three actors and I didn't leave so much space left for the camera, and so the entire...
Critical analysis of The Passion of the Christ and The Da Vinci Code
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Movies are typically created as a means to entertain and inform a wide audience. While this is the case in most instances, it is evident that movies that deal with overt religious themes—while many times fictitious in nature—often spark considerable controversy and anger. One only needs...
Discovering Who the Other Is: Finding Forrester
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
People create their lives based on the environment surrounding them. In Gus Van Sant's 2000 film, Finding Forrester, Jamal Wallace, a black sixteen-year-old basketball player from the Bronx, was always a C student until his test scores showed his true intelligence and potential. This resulted in...
A Performance Analysis of the films Harold and Maude and American Beauty (1999)
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
Over the course of the last three decades American society has taken its fondness of youth and femininity and turned it into an outright obsession. As a direct result of this obsession, women over the age of 35 have been made to feel bad about their bodies, their activity levels, the food they...
Digitalization: The Commercial Rise in Independent Filmmaking
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
Technology has always been the main threat of tradition. The core essence of the filmmaking industry has not evolved because of changes in the audiences, ownerships or content. It has evolved because of the technological push given by the modernizing world, affecting the audiences, ownerships...
The Roles and Reflection of British Society in British Comedies
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
The mechanism of early photographic cameras was as follows: the location and objects in front of the camera were copied onto the film in the form of a frozen, two-dimensional image. Invariably, the photograph was a manifestation of the superficialities of the society at the time. With the...
Documentary Analysis: Bowling for Columbine
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
In the documentaries Bowling for Columbine and Brother's Keeper the filmmakers try to establish certain connections to the audience. Bowling for Columbine focuses on gun control and violence in America. Director Michael Moore uses satire and direct points to get his message across. Brother's...
Art Defined: The Film Industry
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
In 1952 the censorship of the Film Industry lead to significant ramifications. The film medium has experienced several hurdles that are better known of as censorship. Right from the beginning, American officials knew of the influential power of film and, therefore, its need to be controlled...
Making the Family in Monsoon Wedding
Essay - 8 pages - Film studies
Many a novice viewer of Bollywood movies has offered the comment that “they are all the same.” Such comments, of course, may be the result of an othering Gaze that, by paying attention to stylized ritual and ceremony, does not perceive subtle but important differences. On the other...
Unexpected Messengers: Cinematic Portrayals of Text in The Joyless Street
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
A significant yet easily overlooked element of G.W. Pabst's film The Joyless Street is the cinematic representation of text. In the film various crucial developments in the narrative are determined by characters' reactions to information conveyed by text. In each case text becomes a disruptive...
Wall Street
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
In “Wall Street,” the one of the most valuable resources is information. It is also a scarce thing to come by because stockbrokers are reluctant to share what they know, it's difficult and sometimes illegal to acquire information about a firm, and there's a tacit understanding overall...
The Mothers of Martyrdom: Women in Early 20th Century Irish Drama
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
In the early quarter of the 20th century men of Ireland struggled for freedom; forming leagues and brotherhoods and secret organizations of resistance, unionizing labor and creating a more cohesive political resistance, arming themselves and training for armed conflict, eventually fighting the...
The Lost Worlds: Born Out of the TV Show Lost
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
ABC's Lost, just as any other show, works to make you feel connected to its characters. From its beginning it has connected you with the characters and their experiences on the island, and has given you significant development of the characters through flashbacks and eventual flash forwards. At...
"Kids" and Adolescent Sexuality Love Sex and Relationships
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
The film “kids” is a raw account of an urban adolescence focusing on experimentation with sex, drugs, liquor, and violence. The account examines these issues at their absolute worst. One of the issues that the film focuses on is adolescent sexuality. The opening scene depicts a thirteen...
Erwin Piscator: Father Of Political Theater
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Throughout history, both theatrical and otherwise, there are figures that stand out prominently in the collective memory. There are the giants, those triumphant individuals whose work has made an indelible impression on society. And then there are those who stand behind the giants, their...
Ibsen's A Doll House An Analysis
Essay - 9 pages - Film studies
Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House is a play about a woman who comes to understand that she doesn't necessarily understand anything at all. Or, more specific to Ibsen's plot, it is a play about a woman who is forced to reveal a very precious secret and in doing so discovers that the life she is leading...
Spiders or Virgins: Portrayals of Women in the Noir Films Laura, Out of the Past, and Double Indemnity
Essay - 7 pages - Film studies
In her article “Women in Film Noir” Janey Place states that women characters in noir films are divided into two archetypes: “the spider woman, the evil seductress who tempts man and brings about his destruction” and “the virgin, the mother, the innocent, the...
Effectiveness of movies: The example of "Kids" by Larry Clark
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Ever since the creation of the first motion picture, there have been numerous debates over the “effectiveness” of a vast multitude of movies. The term effectiveness is a very broad expression and can be used to cover a huge variety of areas. On a generic basis, did it make the viewer...
The Americanization of High Fidelity
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Many feel that a film adaptation needs to be completely faithful to it original written format. “When viewing the film version of a novel or play they know, they want to find in the film what they valued in the literary work, without asking whether this is the sort of thing film can...
Stage vs. Screen
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
Films are often adapted from plays, and at times they are nearly identical. At other times they have almost nothing to do with one another. In films you can do things that are not feasible and at times not possible on stage. This is not to suggest that the film Crimes of the Heart is in any...
What Do You Expect?
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
Tony Kuschner's play Angel in America is full of contrasts, disparities, and opposite views. Many things are shown at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. There are many differing opinions and complete disagreements that not a large number of things that are constant and similar in the...
Short Forms in Film
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant (1917) is a slapstick comedy that also addresses social issues. The film has a simple plot with four main characters, one of them Charlie Chaplin. He plays a penniless foreigner who wins money from playing cards on a ship to America. He then meets Edna...
True West: Identity
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
One acquires his own identity through his inner self and his milieu. His interpretation of his own needs and desires plays a big role in whether he decides to abide by society's norms or to completely disregard his ego by complying to the inner beast (or what psychologists refer to one's ID). Sam...
Avoiding Disaster: The Day the Earth Stood Still
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
Disaster movies are often associated solely with cheap thrills; nothing more than vehicles for big explosions and even bigger budgets. The modern perception of this film genre (as well as its subgenres) seems to be nothing more than that of a means for movie studios to spend a lot of money, and...
